Fall 2005
A year after Ryan moved out of his mother's house into his own apartment, his father called out of the blue and asked to meet him for the first time since he was a baby. His first reaction was to tell his father to go fuck himself. Ryan didn't blame the guy for leaving Mom, because anyone would have left. Ryan himself had signed the lease for his apartment on his 18th birthday. But his father knew Mom, knew about her mood swings, and left a helpless baby and a little girl in her care anyway. That was unforgivable.
Ten minutes after he cut his father off and slammed the phone down, though, Ryan called back. He invited his father and stepmother over for dinner, if only so that he could have a face to attach all that resentment to.
Two days later, he answered the door and found himself looking at that face -- at least the part of it that wasn't hidden by a bushy grey beard. The features that the beard didn't hide looked nothing like Ryan's, except for his eyes. He had one green eye and one blue eye - something Ryan had never seen before except in the mirror.
Ryan's stepmother looked like she couldn't have been much older than Ryan, but she wasn't pretty enough to be a trophy wife. She hid most of her chunky figure under loose black clothes, but when she raised a stubby hand to wave to Ryan, he saw enough of her forearm to notice white blotches on her dusky skin. They all stood there in silence, sizing each other up for a few seconds.
Ryan spoke first. "Well, hi, come in. As you might have guessed, I'm Ryan."
His father stepped into the front hall and put out a hand for a handshake. "Good to finally meet you, Ryan."
He shook his father's hand because he wasn't feeling quite hostile enough to ignore it.
His father's wife followed behind him, and kicked her shoes off beside the door. "My name is Jamila. It's nice to meet you." She had a gentle voice.
They sat around on the mismatched castoff furniture in Ryan's living room and inquired about each other's lives, while the tray of lasagna finished heating up. Their conversation started out fairly normal. Ryan told his father about his job as a waiter, and his girlfriend, Trisha. His father wanted to know whether he planned to go to college or get married, and seemed a little disappointed when he said he didn't know.
Ryan was surprised to learn that his stepmother was a church secretary, and his father was a minister. "What denomination?" he asked.
The volume of Dad's voice rose. "None. We don't figure we need a council of strangers to tell us how to run our church, when we have the word of God to go by." He stared at Ryan, as if daring him to challenge the statement.
"Oh." Ryan mentally ticked off the 'fundamentalist' box. "But you weren't a minister when you were with Mom, were you?" Mom had only described him as a jerk, and occasionally a liar.
Ryan's father relaxed his posture a notch. "No, I got the calling a few years later."
"How do you get a calling?"
"It's different for everybody, but God sent an angel to me."
"Oh. What does an angel look like?"
"He appeared to me as fire in the night."
"Wow. I bet most ministers don't get a personal invitation like that." Ryan tried to remember what the symptoms of schizophrenia were, besides hallucinations. He drew a blank.
His father gave a slow, dignified nod. "Well, minister is just my official earthly occupation. I'm also a prophet."
Ryan coughed to cover up a startled laugh. Was that a joke? He stole a glance at Jamila, who was picking bits of fluff off her shawl and giving no sign that she found anything unusual or funny. "So God uh... gives you messages?" he asked.
